ease with which people may be deceived intentionally, and the
mischief which, as a general rule, attends a knowledge of the future,
these considerations place beyond all doubt the practical unwisdom of
attempts to arrive at certainty concerning the future. This,
however, cannot affect the weight which in theory should be attached
to phenomena of this kind, and must not prevent us from recognising
the positive existence of the clairvoyance whose existence I am
maintaining, though it is often hidden under a chaos of madness and
imposture.

The materialistic and rationalistic tendencies of the present day
lead most people either to deny facts of this kind in toto, or to
ignore them, inasmuch as they are inexplicable from a materialistic
standpoint, and cannot be established by the inductive or
experimental method--as though this last were not equally impossible
in the case of morals, social science, and politics. A mind of any
candour will only be able to deny the truths of this entire class of
phenomena so long as it remains in ignorance of the facts that have
been related concerning them; but, again, a continuance in this
ignorance can only arise from unwillingness to be convinced. I am
satisfied that many of those who deny all human power of divination
would come to another, and, to say the least, more cautious
conclusion if they would be at the pains of further investigation;
and I hold that no one, even at the present day, need be ashamed of
joining in with an opinion which was maintained by all the great
spirits of antiquity except Epicurus--an opinion whose possible truth
hardly one of our best modern philosophers has ventured to
contravene, and which the champions of German enlightenment were so
little disposed to relegate to the domain of old wives' tales, that
Goethe furnishes us with an example of second sight that fell within